Let’s start with something close to home.

I have found two things in my blogging career that has a direct negative impact on the quality of my articles:

1. When you are not passionate about the topic, it shows:

There is no denying that if you don’t like certain things, it will show.

The same for writing blog posts. If you have to do an article about something way out of your comfort zone or just plain something you hate, you will undoubtedly, produce a lesser quality article.

It is a fact.

Stick to topics you love and if you have to write about topics you dislike, rather source it out, if you have the means. Use services like Fiverr and CopyPress to get those articles going.

Give this article a try, it has 10 writing services you can choose from. Writing services can be expensive and I can honestly say, Iwriter is not bad at all. I have used them in the past and was happy with the service I received.

At the moment I found someone on Fiverr that helps me out every week. The great thing about this is, you now can build a relationship with the freelancer and it gives them a better understanding of who you are and what you really want from them.

You can choose to hire an expert or a standard writer. This will, of course, impact the pricing, but it is not bad.

To give you an example, I paid R209.50 ($13) for a 1000 word premium article. That is not bad hey?

So, before you start pumping out mediocre content that can harm your blog, think about letting someone else rather write the perfect blog post for you.

2. When you are not in the mood and losing focus:

It is hard to be in a writing mood all the time unless you are born with a pen and notebook in your hand, not everyone has a natural talent for writing.  

For the rest of us, we have to work hard and practice writing great articles, and we normally do good when we feel inspired or fresh.

You see, the world of blogging has everyone to believe that you have to write crazy amounts of articles if you want your blog to be a success, but I can tell you that it is simply untrue.

If you try to force yourself to write 3 -5 articles a week because some “self-made blogger” claimed you should, how many articles will be of great quality?

Think about it? How much effort went into research, link building and actually the quality of writing?

I think it is going to be impossible to write the perfect blog post like that. 

Just ask a well-known blogger  Neil Patel, himself said since he stopped producing crazy amounts of articles and focused more on creating a well-focused article, his readers and engagement went up. 

What usually happens to me when I work on an article for a long time or in a long sitting, I tend to lose focus and interest and I can feel when I do, but I keep on pushing because I need to finish the article.

It might feel like you are writing great long form content, but wait until it gets proofread.

Oh boy, sometimes I don’t even know what I was trying to say! It is that horrible.

Time and energy wasted!

If you feel uninspired to write, simply don’t. Rather work on your traffic to your blog or go eat some ice cream.

Your blog won’t vanish in thin air and your readers won’t leave because you did not write the perfect blog post.

If you have loyal readers that are used to your schedule, let them know you are going to post later in the week if you are scared they might abandon you for not providing them with reading material.

I just wanted to share some of my personal issues when it comes to writing articles. You are always more than welcome to write blog post articles the way you feel comfortable. Just remember, quality over quantity will always win.

Focus on writing great quality blog articles and don’t hit publish until you have these 10 steps in place on how to write the perfect blog post.

10 Steps to write the perfect blog post

1. Think before you write:

Most of us start writing articles with whatever pops up in our head and expect that our readers have the same emotion or understanding of what we are trying to put across.

Stop. Think for a minute why you are writing the article and what your end results need to be for the message.

If you write about “how to dress like a unicorn” don’t just jump in and tell people this is how you do it.

Start with who you are, where you are going and why you want to dress like one.

Followed by where to get unicorn clothes etc.

You only have a few seconds to capture your reader’s attention. Plan it right, and they will continue reading your articles all the way to the end. As a bonus, it will certainly help with your time on site and bounce rate.

Which in turn, is great for your SEO. 

SEO – Search Engine Optimization. It’s when a website administrator optimizes his/her website in such a manner that search engines would prefer the content of the website above other websites for the same or related search term.

2. Plan Your Articles:

This step goes hand in hand with step number one but your article needs structure. Helping search engines to better understand and improving user experience, will be your main priority to have a perfect blog post.

Have you ever come across a website that looks like it survived an 8.3 hurricane on the Richter scale?

It is just plain awful to read and you will probably close the site and move on to something new.

Use the following to line out your article:

Introduction – Let people know why, what and who.
Body – The meat of the article
Conclusion – mention the important keys in summarization.

Remember, your introduction should not lead people down a rabbit hole of personal stories and crazy experiences. People generally don’t care about you or your experiences. Sorry to say but it is the sad truth.

People are only reading your articles to find out how it can benefit them and that is it. So, grab their attention and get to the point fast.

3. Make use of paragraphs:

It might seem stupid to mention, but if you are going to write the perfect blog post and keep SEO in mind you have to use paragraphs correctly.

Paragraphs are meant to start with a new topic, discussion or just plain to demonstrate something. If you have a 500-word paragraph, it is going to be extremely difficult to read and to fully understand.

New paragraphs must have a logical explanation for why you are starting a new one.

Don’t just start a sentence on a new line just because it looks good, remember it is all about user experience and user experience count for SEO too.

If you use a plugin like Yoast SEO it will help you, by pointing out any lengthy paragraphs and for the perfect blog post, you should not have paragraphs longer than 300 words.

4. Correct Headings:

Using headings in your articles is very important for the structure of your article.

Have you found yourself scanning through a very long article just for that one bit you are looking for? In other words, you are just skimming the article.

We all do it. This is why it is important to use headings to let readers know what is being discussed. Headings and subheadings are meant to enhance your content and make it more understandable.

Adding headings to your content helps for SEO purposes and it also makes it much easier for Google and other search engines to understand your content.  I would say 1 Title Headline (H1) and 1 Sub Headline (H2) about 4 to 12 sub-headlines (H3), would be a great way to plan your article.

In the DIVI Text editor (Also WordPress editor), you can select your heading types by selecting the heading and choosing what title headline you want to use.

5. Links (Internal and External):

Linking Internally

Linking to a different post and other pages on your site, show authority and it lets you create your own network of links on your website.

Links are also very important to add to your article structure when you want to write the perfect blog post. It will help increase your rankings in search engines and help readers discover more related articles they might be interested in.

In short, internal links let you connect to pages and important posts on your website. It is important for you to establish a hierarchy on your website, plus it helps Google spider bots to better understand, crawl and index your website structure.

Ultimately, it helps with overall on-page SEO of your website.



Linking externally

External Links can be looked at in two different ways. It is such an important aspect of SEO that we can write a whole 5000-word article on the subject alone.

Let’s look at the easy way of doing external links. External links are when you link to other relevant and valuable information that is not on your domain. Other words, linking to someone else’s website.

From an SEO standpoint, it can carry a lot of good weight, when used correctly. Google can and will penalize you if you link to a spammy, low value and not relevant website.

The other more difficult way to get external links is actually called backlinks. Backlinks are when someone links to your content, this shows Google that your content is considered highly valuable and carries a lot of authority.

This is a great way to climb the Google ladder really fast, as search engines consider back linking as one of their key factors, for ranking websites.

What does link building have to do with how to write a perfect blog post?

Well, a lot actually. It all boils down to you creating good shareable content that people will naturally link to. It drives more traffic to your content.

Not only will it link readers to your posts but it will help your post to rank better in the search results. This will lead to more visitors finding your page. 

6. Updating and adding new content:

Updating your content continuously is a must, especially if you write about subjects like SEO or how to start a blog, as it evolves regularly.

For example, if you wrote an article to help people in 2016 it might not be applicable any more in 2018 and it needs to be updated.

Articles like – “10 Best ways to use keywords in 2016”

In fact, if readers come across your article and use the advice you mentioned, it might hurt their rankings. Or they will not even bother reading your outdated article to begin with. This will lead to a higher bounce rate.

Adding new content to your website is super important for both users and search engines.
If you write with the intent to help people, people will realize you are posting regularly and will become a visitor daily.

Obviously, this is what you need to aim for, creating a following for your website is the ultimate way to build trust and loyal readers.

Search engines love new content, in fact, the more you update your old content on your website with fresh up-to-date content the more search engines will visit your website, which in turn can lead to better indexing and ultimately better ranking.

You also provide your website with better keywords with every article you post. Keywords play a big role in search engines algorithms. Adding all these new keyword optimize articles and can attract more visitors to your site.

It is all about becoming an authority figure in the industry, only good shareable content will get you there.

7. Article Lengths:

This is a tough one, we all know and have heard of the term “content is King” before. Well, it is still true. We talked about pushing crazy amounts of articles, and we all agreed to rather focus on good quality LONG FORM CONTENT than a bunch of micro-posts.

Look up “best article lengths for SEO” you will get millions of different answers from everyone across planet earth to Mars.  Most experts will say something in the region of a minimum of 600 words, up to a very lengthy 5000-word article.

What do I believe? Well, good content is made to be shared and it is difficult to come up with a good article of fewer than 300 words, however, I am leaning towards the 800 words minimum, purely because it leaves you enough room to provide a good article. Longer articles also tend to be more favoured by search engines.

In my opinion, if you start a blog, provide good content and use well-researched keywords, you don’t necessarily need to write blog post that are 1000 or more words.  Mix it up a little and write blog posts between 600 and 3000 words. 

If you think about it actually, search engines prefer long content because you go much more into details about the topic. 

Pro Tip – Go 10 inches deep and one inch wide, not one inch deep and 10 inches wide.

8. Keyword research:

Keyword research is the bread and butter of any article. Before I give my articles a Title tag, I like to go to Ubersuggest ( it is a free keyword tool) to look up some keyword suggestions that I would like to rank for in Google Search.

I then ensure to use my selected keyword in my H1 heading and add it throughout my post, in order for it to read naturally.  This way it ensures for a better read and it tells Google what the focus of my article is. Google gets to better understand and index my article this way.

So for this article, I am trying to focus on “write the perfect blog post” as my long tail keyword

Learn more about Ubersuggest by watching this video below:

If you want to use something that is direct from the source you should use Google’s keyword planner. Set your search for South Africa or wherever you are located if you are writing for the local crowd and enter a few keyword suggestions. See how many searches it gets a month, also the difficulty it might be to rank for that keyword.

You also should use the suggested keywords as a good indicator of what you can and may use.

Pro Tip – Look at the monthly search volume and if it is 1000 or more and the ranking difficulty is low, this should be a good indicator of a great idea for an article. 

9. Images:

Quite easy and straightforward, visitors are lazy and most of the time just scan articles and look at the images.

If you use images it will help them find what they are looking for much easier.

Let’s look at 4 reasons why you want images in your article.

1. It gives your eyes a rest between text.
2. Gives readers a starting point in your article
3. It gives readers an idea of what the article is about
4. Supports the article visually like infographics, diagrams, and charts.

We as humans love beautiful pictures, Just look at how massively successful Instagram and Pinterest are.

10. Proofread:

Please proofread your articles before you publish them. If you are fortunate enough to have someone in your life who can help you out by proofreading your articles, that is a bonus. How you think and interpret something, is not necessarily the same for someone else.

Let them help you by pointing out your mistakes and take it as positive criticism. It is easy to feel discouraged when they point out a lot of mistakes.  So, take it easy and do whatever you have to, to get your post ready for publication.

Remember, the article is not for you but for your readers, you don’t want to come off as incompetent, especially when you are dishing out advice.

If you don’t have anyone that can help, use professional services like Fiverr and search for “proofread” you will find all kinds of freelancers who can help you out for a couple of bucks.  Whatever you do, don’t post your blog post before someone else has read it first.

It takes time to write the perfect blog post

Don’t be hard on yourself when starting out, it is not easy writing articles when it is not naturally your thing.

It is going to take some time but with every article you write and hit publish it’s going to be another learning experience and every time you do, you will get better at it.

If you take one thing away from this article then it should be this and trust me when I say this, you will get discouraged at some or other time in your blogging journey, but don’t let it get you down, just remind yourself why you started in the first place and never give up.

Keep on writing and keep on learning.

Wrapping it up.

Write, write and write some more. The more you write the better you will become. Don’t push yourself beyond breaking point to produce an endless string of blog posts.

 Rather focus on quality and not quantity.

If you don’t like the topic rather let someone else write it at Iwriter or when you don’t have anyone that can help with proofreading, let a professional at Fiverr help you out.

It takes time to do well, just don’t give up and you will succeed in time.

Use these steps we covered in this article to form a base for each and every article you create and you will start to see a positive change in yourself and analytics.

Happy Blogging.

If you have any questions regarding this article please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you.

Affiliate Disclaimer: In this or most of my post I recommend products or services via links or and banners. If any of these links end up in a sale I get a small commision at no extra cost to you.